This topic ties in perfectly with a strategy that I'm putting together for Road Runner Sports. We've only recently examined the revenue power of referral traffic from respected and socially driven blogs in our niche. That said, I've been given the directive to "go get sites to link to us." I laughed to myself when they started throwing out ideas like commenting with links and posting in forums, etc. I quickly had to summarize the last 10 years of the SEO industry to them. All said and done, I was left brainstorming how we could integrate our content marketing and social media efforts in a way that would establish credible relationships with publishers and authors in our niche that would naturally, over time, result in valuable links to our product pages.

Hopefully here in a few months I'll have some valuable insight into this application for e-commerce websites, not only for SEO links but referral links that produce revenue on the spot!

Thanks again for the post - you really got my creative juices flowing this morning!

Great recap Kristina! Responsive design is something my firm has been dealing with for a little over a year now. We've developed several websites on a responsive template and have come across several of the points you've discussed in this article. It's my personal belief that several of the questions regarding the mobile versions of websites can be answered or avoided by hiring the right designer. Here's a few of my tips when considering hiring a responsive web design firm: *Creating the perfect responsive website comes down to hiring a great designer, and then a front end developer that works well with that designer. Designing a responsive site is a serious team effort. Find a great team, and you'll avoid a ton of headaches. *Make sure your designer has plenty of experience working within and designing on a grid. *As a client, minimize your expectations for crazy, off the wall responsive design. When designing on a grid, some creativity is forced to be sacrificed. If you have a good designer, that keeps the needs and goals of a website in mind while designing on a responsive grid, you can make your mobile site achieve the usability and communicate your message as efficiently as your desktop version. Here's a few examples of what Miles Design has done over the last 6 months.

Great post, Tom! .htaccess intimidated the hell out of me for several years. It wasn't until I recently took over majority control of Miles Design's website that I become more comfortable. The tips you've offered are very helpful - I'll specifically be applying the custom 404 page as soon as our site redesign is complete and ready for launch! Do you have any insight on finding the correct place within the .htaccess to make these changes? That was always the most intimidating aspect for me...

Great post. This is a very common question I get from clients. My initial hunch: never remove content from a website! Sure, the product is no longer offered by Xbrand's website, BUT if I am searching for that exact match product title, and you've left a page with high link equity that happens to rank on page 1 for my longtail (conversion ready) search, then landing on your page will make me happy (and might still lead to a conversion) if it does the following:

Give me easy alteratives - related products! (Perhaps there is a new model or an update to the product - HOOORRAY to you sir or madame, for not 404ing this page and giving me (the user) this wonderful information....I do believe I will purchase your product...((WIN))

Great work guys, and thank you for publishing a downloadable white paper -- I'll definitely need to re-read this study a few more times in order to fully digest it!

I'd like to see the next study from Slingshot SEO's R&D department concern itself with the topic of "SEO isn't just about rankings" - people, clients, bosses, etc. need to see numbers that reinforce the fact that SEO work creates revenue streams beyond 1st page ranking converstion metrics.